Wicked: Part 1 (2024)

 

The above is the trailer for "Wicked" which was released six months ago. If you don't see any indication that this is just the opening film in a two part release, that's because there is no indication offered here. Until a week before the release in November, I had no idea that the film would be an incomplete presentation of the Broadway phenomena. Oh, and by the way, "Part One" as it will now be referred to, is two hours and forty minutes. The play on the stage runs 2 hours forty-five minutes. So am I supposed to believe that the next film released next year will be a two and a half hour presentation of five minutes of material? This movie is as padded as could be and it is a deliberate money grab, unlike some other works in the not too distant past ("The Deathly Hallows" needed to be two films). 

I have no interest in dissing all the theater kids who have worshiped and been inspired by the Broadway musical, but this was a big shrug of the shoulders for me.  I have no idea why this would inspire more devotion than dozens of other Broadway presentations. I have never seen the play, so I can't really comment on it. Maybe the stagecraft is what makes it work. Maybe the actors and dancers on stage are choregraphed in a way that brings the story to life. This film did not do any of that for me. It is pretty to look at at times, but hardly different from a number of other good looking films (most Wes Anderson movies would give this a run for the money). Of course my opinion is moot because this movie opened to huge box office and is expected to run through the holidays, becoming a cash cow for Universal Studios. Expect feature attractions at the theme parks in the next couple of years. 

Reimaging the story of a film from the perspective of the villain may very well have been invented by the author of the book that the musical is based on. We have had a number of these sorts of things in the last few years, "Maleficent" comes to mind immediately. Maybe it works, but often at the expense of the original story. I can't say exactly where this is headed, since I am unfamiliar with the play, but it sure looks like the Wizard is getting dumped on, and Dorothy will be reimagined as a selfish brat who broke the heart of poor  Elphaba. I guess we will see next year (if I can bring myself to endure the story again). 

As for this film, it starts off in telling the Wicked Witch of the Wests origin story, with drunken infidelity. That sure seems like a far cry from the family friendly confines of the original books. Cynthia Eviro plays the green offspring of an illicit affair (there is a hint of something here that may or may not be significant), and she sings well but has to play a bullied child who is defiant yet hurting on the inside. Ariana Grande is Galinda, a spoiled child who expects only the best treatment and has to learn some humility. At first they are rivals, then friends, and then estranged compatriots of the wizarding world (Galinda having no powers noy withstanding). 

There are nearly a dozen songs, none of which is particularly memorable outside of the context of their presentation. "Popular" works because of the situation the characters are in, not because of its melody. There are some clever lyrics but most of it is narrative stuck on a tune that barely registers. "Defying Gravity" works the same way, the lyrics spell out a conundrum for the two leads, but it is only interesting because of the visualization that goes along with it. The best number, both thru musicality and visualization was "Dancing Through Life", as it is a turning point in the relationship between the two women. 

The cast dance numbers are just not very interesting as they are presented here. Director John Chu may have a good touch with humor and relationships, but the staging of the dance numbers is just not filmed in an interesting way. I enjoyed the dancing in "Anna and the Apocalypse" more than this, and that film was not nearly as intricate or expensive. Maybe it is the hip hop style of some of the background dancers that just does not appeal to me. 

Story wise, the film has a lot of paths it starts down, and maybe they will pay off. If the stage play really deserved a six hour treatment though, it might have been better to do this as a limited series. Then you could go somewhere with characters like Nessarose, Boq, Pfannee and even the Wizard. This movie definitely needed more Jeff Goldblum. The Wizard is a central figure who is more opaque here than in the original film. 

I am not saying it is a bad movie, I'm just saying it wasn't for me. I can't quite grasp the enthusiasm with which it is being embraced. I'm a film fan and a musical fan, but this feels like it is made for theater consumption only. I'm a sentimental man, but something bad has happened. What is this feeling? Complete indifference.  

The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension (1984) Revisit

 

If ever there was a movie that I could make people watch, and hopefully love, it is "The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension". You are completely safe to watch the trailer, there are no spoilers there. In fact, there is no real information in the trailer at all. It tells you what kind of movie this is with just it's tone. There are only two lines of dialogue and they are a flippant response to starting World War III. The main hero is not shown doing anything more challenging than walking down a sloped concrete flood channel, and he is doing so while wearing a suit and a bow tie. This movie is confounding to people from the very start, after all, the very title is offputtingly odd. The short trailer just uses the weird theme and shots of a variety of strange people joining the lead character on his walk. Then you get a couple of brief shots of who knows what, and finish with the hysterical exchange about destroying Russia. No wonder the film never caught on in 1984.

Of course it caught on with me, because I was a film weirdo and tried to see as many movies as I could that year, and this Science Fiction concept had been hyped a little in "Starlog" magazine, and that was enough to get me into theaters to see it opening weekend. Apparently, I was the only person in the San Gabriel Valley who read "Starlog" because I was mostly alone in that first screening. However, I have not been alone for 40 years, thousands have become fans of this cult experience and like me, now consider themselves Blue Blazed Irregulars. The Alamo Drafthouse has been screening films from 1984 during their time capsule series this year, and I got another chance to see this on a theater screen, I think this may be the fourth time. The theater was not packed, but there was a reasonable smattering of Irregulars in the auditorium, and you could tell by their reactions during the film and their comments afterwards that they were as pleased to be there as I was. 

The title hero, Buckaroo Banzai, is not just a physicist, he is also a neurosurgeon, test pilot, and rock star. Neil DeGrasse Tyson and Stephen Hawkings would be jealous of his expertise but like everyone else, they would be charmed by his down to earth manner and sardonic humor. The Zen like statements that he uses to reassure his team, also suggest he is an Eastern Philosopher.  Yet at no time is he condescending to the political dolts around him, the non-scientists that he works with, or the public at large. Peter Weller will always be "Robocop" in his biography/obituary, but I will also always think of him as Dr. Banzai. Weller's low key demeanor, and willingness to let the crazies around him have the spotlight, make this a subtle performance. Oh, by the way, I should refer to him as Dr. Peter Weller, since he did not get a PhD in art history and literature, just to be referred to as Mr. .

"Buckaroo Banzai" is an 80s science fiction film that makes up with creativity and humor, what it lacks in budget. The locations are filled with conduit pipes, heat vent tubes and what might be some form of foam rubber molding. The humorous self awareness of the film can be observed in the scene where the cast members look at a holographic message through goggles that are made of bubble wrap. There are deliberate attempts to show us that this story is both a salute to and a parody of those kinds of pulp heroes that have come before. "Why is there a watermelon there?", is not a question you will get a straight answer to. I also don't know why lithium is no longer available on credit. That's because I am a monkey boy who does not have the insight of a red lectroid like Lord John Whorfin.

John Lithgow had been nominated for a supporting actor Oscar in both of the two previous years. His take on the character of Dr. Emilio Lizardo, should have made it three in a row. Lizardo, is a scientist who in a failed attempt to break the dimension barrier in the 1930s, allowed the evil Dictator John Whorfin to possess his mind and plot a return to power while in a mental hospital for thirty years. The cross pollination of Italian accented scientist with megalomaniacal Red Lectroid, results in one of the most demented and delightful performances to ever be committed to film. Lithgow runs wild with bulging eyes, slathering monologues,  and accents that would befuddle any linguist, regardless of their credentials. His obtuse interactions with his underlings is a great contrast to his opponent, Buckaroo.

Another reason that the film may have been overlooked at the time is that the supporting cast, which is filled with great performers, was in the early part of their careers, and audiences had not yet recognized their potential.  Clancy Brown was not yet Kurgan from the Highlander film, Dan Hedaya was still waiting for the Coen Brothers to make Blood Simple. Christopher Lloyd was a well established oddball character actor, but he was not an above the titles name. Neither were Vincent Schiavelli, Matt Clark or Ellen Barkin. The only supporting player with some potential drawing power was Jeff Goldblum, and he was also at his nascent point in his career.  Goldblum, as fellow brain surgeon and sidekick, is a complete joy to watch as he trapses through the movie in one of the most ridiculous cowboy getups since Hopalong Cassidy. 

The action scenes aren't great, but they are adequate. What you need to know however, is that they are merely a frame to hang the wry dialogue and arch attitude on. The film skewers and salutes these kinds of movies simultaneously.  This is smart film making that looks like cheap, dumb sci-fi filler, but is one of the greatest treasures in a year that was filled with great films. Jump in your jet car and find an Alamo that is playing this, NOW. You will thank me, and if you miss it, you will hate yourself. 

Jurassic World: Dominion

 

In preparation for the latest Dinosaur extravaganza, I recently watched all the other films in this series. There is a reason that Steven Spielberg is the most celebrated director of our times and Colin Trevorrow is a journeyman with only bits of occasional inspiration. Two suspense scenes in the first two Jurassic Park films show you what a master Spielberg is. The initial T-Rex attack in Jurassic Park is one of the most tense, frightening and well directed scenes in a movie ever. In The Lost World: Jurassic Park, the attack on the trailers adds on tension in each moment that Spielberg makes work so much longer and more effectively than anyone else has managed to do. Trevorrow, for all his gifts, simply does not have the instinct that Spielberg does. His tension building scenes are too abrupt, too frequent, and sometimes over the top in a way that he can't quite pull off.  It's not meant as an insult to say he is no Spielberg, it is simply an acknowledgement that his films have not been able to work at the same level.

Jurassic World Dominion is not a failure because of the action scenes, the problem is actually the opposite, the action scenes fail because the rest of the movie cannot quite justify them, I was willing to go along with the revamped "Jurassic World" because it stemmed from a solid idea, that built on what came before it, and even though it stretched the concept a bit, it managed to work. "Fallen Kingdom" and "Dominion" don't have the right premise going for them, so the stringing together of solid action beats with bad story ideas and dumb characters, just won't cut it. I enjoyed the moments of action in the film that employed the main characters from the two sets of film groups, but the secondary characters are underwritten, somewhat unnecessary and disposed of either too soon for us to enjoy their comeuppance, or without much drama. 

These posts never give away spoilers and I try to refrain from simply recapping the film as part of the discussion, which is a good thing in this case because I'm not sure I could keep it all straight. Characters come in who start off as antagonists, then end up as allies and allies disappear after a few scenes and are never heard from again. There are genetically created murder locusts, that may threaten the world food supply, but then they may simply be a marketing tool for genetically modified crops, but then the geneticist who created them demurs and maybe we want to get rid of them. It simply depends on the scene as to which way the evil corporation is going at the moment. There is no logical consistency in the objectives of the antagonists and the heroes have mixed motives for their actions as well. There are a bunch of shady characters who are acting out of greed, but sometimes they just seem to be malevolent for the sake of being evil.

All of this is happening in a universe that is not vey well thought out. There are dinosaurs in the wild, dinosaurs nesting in urban areas, dinosaurs in nature preserves, dinosaurs in illegal breeding factories, and dinosaurs in private possession. Despite all of the potential dino death surrounding everyone, the culture moves on as if the threat does not exist, until it is in your face. Are the velociraptors creatures to be feared and potential rivals to our dominance of the planet? Or are they creatures to be pitied because they are hunted, and misunderstood?  The film makers do their best to get as many different dinosaurs into the story as they can, and sometimes they come across as teddy bears, and other times as venomous snakes from the outback. 

As dangerous as a dinosaur might be, the human characters are the ones that present the biggest menace because they all offer a moment of pontification and exposition that just might kill...your interest in what is happening. Bryce Dallas Howard, Chris Pratt, Laura Dern, Sam Neil, Jeff Goldblum, B.D. Wong, and Campbell Scott all have a moment when they provide exposition and supposed philosophical insight into the events that are happening. Remember the scene where Jeff Goldblum and Sam Neil are warning John Hammond at the dinner table in Jurassic Park? Well it feels like that happens every ten minutes in this film. It's as if TED Talks become the standard way that people communicate with one another. The most human and realistic moment comes when Ellie Stadler voices exactly what the audience is thinking after listening to a guru like Steve Jobs monologue from Dodgson. "What?"  It drew a laugh, but even such meta awareness doesn't stop it from continuing. Everyone sounds like Jeremy Rifkin or Al Gore at some point, and it just gets to be too much.

Aside from the schizophrenic story telling, cartoon characters, implausible technology and unexplained political realities, the movie was fun to watch for two and a half hours. If you want high tech thriller mixed with old school adventure, just drop down to the subterranean hyper loop of Elon Musk, I mean Lewis Dodgson, and follow Sam Neil's Dr. Grant as he plays 'Indiana Jones in the Tunnel of Dinosaurs".  Just don't get distracted by the flaming killer locusts who will distract you until it is time for the two apex predators to face off in a climax that means nothing. If you put some Raisinettes  in your popcorn, along with some Hot Tamales, you will have done a more logical job of gene splicing than this movie, and you will enjoy consuming that a lot more than the film.

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom

Do you go to a Jurassic Park movie for the story, characters and wonder that the idea of dinosaurs living in the modern world would evoke, or do you go to see a monster movie, you know with visually interesting creatures ripping up various human characters in a variety of ways? Your answer to this dichotomy will largely tell you whether you are going to like this movie or hate it. "Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom" is a creature feature. It is not an adventure movie or a science debate, it is people running and screaming from monsters. Sometimes those people get away, sometimes they don't. If the characters were more well drawn, you would probably care which, but frankly, this film could not be bothered to worry about actually killing one of our somewhat sympathetic heroes, mostly it is just concerned with mayhem.

Director J.A. Bayona appears to be a critics darling, having made three widely praised film. I've not seen "The Orphanage" but I did see "The Impossible" and  "A Monster Calls".  These are both fine films with effecting personal and emotional weight to them. I do notice however, that he is not a credited screenwriter for either of those film, nor is he credited for "Fallen Kingdom". It appears then, that the elements that make his material work best will be the way he frames and shoots the story, rather than the story itself. Those folks who respect his work may want to go back and see if what they really like is the concept or screenplay rather than the direction.  He has put together a reasonable thrill ride for us, but there is very little in any of this which would lead you to believe he is more of a visionary than a craftsman. Aside from two or three nice little moments, this is a picture that could have been assembled by anybody capable of the logistics required to move this mass of technology.

Just two scenes seem to have the visually creative touch that was present in the two of his movies I've seen. First, there is a clever moment when an expedition lands on the island that contained the former amusement park, and we see their vehicle driving down main street as we look at a tracking shot from behind the demolished vendor's booths and stores. We see some stuffed dinosaur toys back-lit against the vehicle, until one of them runs off revealing that it actually was a small dinosaur. That was effective. There is another scene late in the film where the reflection of a dinosaur if superimposed over the face of a character in the reflections from a display window in a diorama. That works well also. Otherwise, there are really no surprises. Monsters do what they are expected to do, we get a couple of false paths that turn to jokes and a few jump scares that work effectively, and that's about it.

Chris Pratt and Dallas Bryce Howard are probably worth what they were paid for the film. She is a lot more appealing in this story than in the first re-boot "Jurassic World", and he continues to bring enough humor to make the movie lively, or at least lively at times. Her conversion to animal rights activist seems a little week, but she does work well with the dinosaurs and Pratt, especially on the island sequence. Pratt gets to make most of the jokes in the film which is fine because that's what he does best. When he has to be a combination of Rambo, Bruce Lee and John McClane, it is harder to take the movie seriously. Two fine actors are wasted in the movie and another one has a felony committed in his name. Ted Levine, who is so memorable as "Buffalo Bill" from "The Silence of the Lambs", has a thankless role as a villain, who is so stupid as to demand to be paid when crazed animals have disrupted an auction, and then goes souvenir seeking in the most dangerous scenario imaginable in this plot. Geraldine Chaplain, who was in "Dr. Zhivago", also has a thankless role that sets her up as an important character in the household where the climax of the film takes place, and then she is dropped completely.

The major felony is the misuse of Jeff Goldblum's Ian Malcolm character form the first two Jurassic Park movies. In those films, he was the voice of reason with a sardonic voice and the ability to let the air out of someone too inflated with themselves, in a sarcastic and hysterical manner. In this film, he has two brief scenes that bookend the movie. He sits behind a table and pontificates to a Congressional panel on the risks of the Dinosaurs being removed from potential danger. I don't think he has a single joke, facial moment or tone that makes his appearance here essential. Someone else in the movie makes a joke about writing fortune cookies, that's what all of Goldblum's dialogue is. His aphorisms about DNA would make Jeremy Rifkin blush with overkill.

This looks impressive on the side of a tall building in L.A.

Tomorrow on a podcast, I suspect that most of the participants will be happy to poke holes in the logic of the story. Believe you me, that's what I expect to do in order to make the conversation amusing. However, there are some good action sequences in the film. The opening mission to the park to recover some DNA was well staged and there were some clever moments in it. The sequence with Claire and tech guy/coward Franklin Web, where they are trapped in a control room at the park was perfectly fine at giving us tense jump scares and some funny moments. I also enjoyed the scene in you young girl's bedroom as she hides from a monster under her covers. Chris Pratt's hero mode is more functional there. Pratt got some good laughs in a scene where he and Howard are getting a blood donation from a T-Rex. So there is fun to be had, but you have to turn off your brain to enjoy it.

Ranking the Jurassic Park films seems to be one of the things that people are doing as they talk about this film. I have some opinions on that as well, but I will save those for the Lambcast. Otherwise I suggest you see the film, load up on popcorn, candy and soda, because that is where all the nutritional value of your visit to the theater will be.

Isle of Dogs

OK, it's only the end of March but I think I can safely say this will be on my year end list of favorite films. I dig stop motion animation, I have enjoyed more than my fair share of Wes Anderson films, and I love dogs. Going in it should be a no brainer but I had a few doubts because of the supposed allegorical references to modern issues of immigration and xenophobia. It turns out that anyone who wants to find a tenative tie to some modern political issue in a film, does not have to work that hard. People, if you are reading that much into this story, you need to cut down on your caffeine.

The Wes Anderson style is all over this film. You can hear it in the clipped remarks that the dogs make to one another. It is also full of the color palates that he so lavishly uses in all of his movies (or at least the ones I have seen). Much of the interaction has a dynamic and undercurrent to it that makes it feel as if we are hearing two conversations at once, a surface level interface and then a deeper more satirical intercourse. There are also several visual gags that are gruesome and hysterical at the same time. No one could mistake this for a movie made by someone else.

The fact that only Anderson could have produced this film is one of the reasons that I can't take any of the charges of cultural appropriation seriously. While the truth is that he is a westerner telling a story set in Japan, it only matters that it is Japanese for some historical context. The idea that a group of people could be mislead by a nefarious political leader is not uniquely Japanese. The notion of parts of a culture being banished is not Japanese either. I'm willing to give him credit for letting the human characters speak in Japanese without making it seem like subtitles are necessary for every utterance. As I have said numerous times in my classes, "you can find something to argue about in just about anything. That doesn't mean that it is problematic to most people."

The aesthetic of the film is definitely weird.  The flu that the dogs have seems to be an odd contrivance but it works for the story. The notion of "Trash Island", is not all that different than the planet that Thor ends up on in Thor Ragnorock. The fact that Jeff Goldblum is featured in both pictures must be coincidental. The island is a nicely realized habitat that our pack has to navigate to reach an objective. There are complex backgrounds but even more intricate machinery and architecture than one would imagine in a dump.

Everything else though is backdrop for the charming story of a boy separated from his dog, and the bonds that humans and animals really do need to be complete. As a dog owner, I have frequently put words in my dogs mouths. Wes Anderson does this for the whole movie and the words are both profound and amusing. My guess is that everyone here will have a favorite dog that he/she will relate to and love. "Chief", "Duke" and "Spots" are my favorites, but ultimately all the dogs are like most dogs, lovable once you get to know them.

I can't imagine the time and talent it took to create the intricate puppets that get used for the stop motion action in the film. I know computer work must also have played a part but even then, something has to be designed first and the art direction and characters in this movie are astonishing. The actors all feel as if they are carefully matched to their characters. Bryan Cranston as Chief manages to be gruff but also winsome in spots. Goldblum's Duke is a never ending fountain of understatement and set up lines, with just the right sonorous tone to make it sound somewhat intellectual. The music combines traditional Japanese flavored drums with more tuneful passages to also add to the environment that everyone in the film is occupying.

Everyone else may have noticed this, it's not a haiku but it is a homophone: "I Love Dogs  "

Thor: Ragnarok

If anybody was holding their breath because they were worried about this film, you can let it out now. "Thor: Ragnarok" is as good as promised and entertaining as hell.  I keep hearing how it is the shortest of the Marvel Films, but it did not feel to me like it was shorting us on anything. We got an expansion of the Asgardian Universe, there are significant connections to the rest of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and "the Avengers" get to play a little in this sandbox as well. It may not be essential to the progress of the phases of the Marvel plan, but it is a solid stand-alone with enough Easter Eggs to keep the faithful happy.

I want to start with something that is usually a side-note or an endcap to most film reviews, the use of source music. Whatever they paid for the use of the Led Zeppelin "Immigrant Song", it is worth twice that. You almost certainly heard it in the teaser trailer and you know the hypnotic effect it can have when combined with images from the film. In the movie itself, the tune gets used in two places and each one is just perfect. It works the way the "Mission Impossible" theme does, it underlies the mythos  of Thor, it accentuates the mood and it tells us that a moment of heroic action is on the way. Zeppelin may have been finished since 1980, but the songs have continued to transfix listeners for almost 40 years since they left the stage, with this use of the tune, they will safely be around for forty more years. There is one other tune that gets used in a slightly different spot. It has not been advertised so I won't spoil it for you, but if you don't laugh out loud when it comes up, you are either without a sense of humor, or you were never a child of the seventies.

Since we are on issues not related so much to the plot, let me explain how valuable a second investment the makers of these movies chose that pays off in spades. The Grandmaster is not an essential character in the Cinematic Universe, but he is essential to the humor in this film. It may be that any movie without Jeff Goldblum in it will never seem funny by comparison. You "Jurassic Park" fans will smile with every line reading. It is as if the funny parts of Ian Malcom were transplanted onto this alien being who has control of a trash planet and uses his power for evil. His line readings are incredibly arch and dry. Goldblum's facial expressions match the vocal performance with the same kind of wit, it is never over the top but rather pitch perfect for the brief moment we are given it.

Cate Blanchett is Hela, the villainess of the film. Her character has a more reasonable explanation for existence than most of the similar female antagonists in these kinds of films do ( see "The Mummy" or "Suicide Squad for examples). In the big scheme of things, Hela turns out to be a one off for this story, but she was an exceptionally effective one off. Taika Waititi is a director that I am not familiar with although his two prior films have lots of admirers, I've yet to see either one of them. He deploys Blanchett in small doses and lets her actually act in some of the scenes rather than simply pose, but she does also get to pose. If the three point stance of a super-hero is now a trope, the slow motion turn of a villain must be as well, and it is used here regularly.

The relationship of Chris Hemsworth's Thor to Tom Hiddlestons Loki, continues to be the thread that holds the line of films together. The characters have grown enough to be interesting, Thor is still arrogant, but he is wiser and his humor is much more self effacing than in previous installments. Loki doesn't change so much as he does adjust to circumstances. We can almost always count on him to betray his brother, but we can also now see that he understands how important it is to have someone to betray. It is an amusing conundrum. The two actors play off of each other really well. When you throw in Mark Ruffalo as Bruce Banner/The Hulk, it gets even better. At one point Thor gets the treatment that Loki did in "The Avengers" and the smirk of satisfaction on Hiddleston's face is great.

Earlier this year we got Chris Pine in "Wonder Woman", this film has a feature role for Karl Urban. Now we somehow have to get Zachery Quinto into one of these super hero stories so that all the main cast of the "Star Trek" films can point to a comic book movie on their resume. I did not recognize Urban at first but I did know that the actor in the part was much better than the part first appeared to require. As the film went on, there was more to it and suddenly we see why you needed an actor like Urban. Anthony Hopkins appears to finish off his role as Odin, the father of the main characters, and a figure of stature that seems to embody the idea of real Gods. He is used sparingly, but just his visage matters in the later parts of the story.

"Thor: Ragnarok" is funny as heck, with a couple of subplots that pay off in the end. I don't see a huge tie in to the whole Marvel Universe but maybe I was laughing to hard to notice some of the connections. It feels like a seventies psychedelic comic book has come to life. The colors and characters will keep you amused and the story is just about as solid as you can get for a non-Avengers Avengers movie. It's hard to think of this film as being part of the same world as the Spiderman film we got earlier this year, except someone clearly remembers  that the word "Comic" implies funny.

Movies I Want Everyone to See:Into the Night

Inspired by this films recommendation on "The Forgotten Filmcast" I have slipped this in a bit earlier than it was scheduled to show up. This is another of my "Movies I Want Everyone to See" series that was originally published on the defunct site "Fogs Movie Reviews" in the Fall of 2013.


Review by Richard Kirkham
"Into the Night" is a film that I recommend for a somewhat narrow range of reasons. Although it is referred to as a comedy, action, thriller, it barely qualifies in each of those categories. Don't get me wrong, there is a lot that is funny about the movie, and there is some action and tension along the way, and what could be more thrilling than seeing Michelle Pfeiffer at the peak of her beauty and charm? The real reason to see this movie however is the tour of Southern California culture from the 1980s that you get along the way. It is a very loose film with some nice sequences and dialogue but as a film it seems to lurch forward and wander around the story at times, but oh what interesting times.




An essay over at A.V. Club, classifies this film and several others, as films which fit into a particular genre, actually called into the night films. The classification is based first on story line. The lead disappears into another subculture, usually starting with a night time excursion. The second point the essay suggests is that these mostly eighties films are sociological examinations of the conflict that the baby boomer generation feels over the rejection of the values championed by the counter culture of the 1960 and 70s by the preponderant culture in the 1980s. It is an interesting point and as a paper submitted in a graduate writing class in Cinema, it probably scored the author an A. Let's extend their point for one more comment, all of the films that were mentioned (with the exception of two John Hughes films which probably don't fit) were culturally marginal as well.
When this film was released it received quite negative reviews from the critics. The New York Times was very dismissive but Roget Ebert went one step further, giving the film a single star rating on his scale. Both reviews focused on the insider nature of the movie. The film features cameo appearances by a variety of Hollywood types, including at least 17 film directors. The suggestion here is that the film was mostly an excuse to get a bunch of friends together and have an extended party at the studio's expense. It is not possible to say for sure that this was not the case, but it can be said that those guest shots are not distracting from the movie. While sometimes the interjection of these actors, directors and writers did turn the movie into a game of "spot the hidden celebrity", that added to the fun of the premise and emphasized what the movie is about. The subject here is Hollywood itself.


A quick plot summary: Ed Okin is an aerospace engineer suffering from insomnia and job burnout. After he discovers his marriage is even less than he thought it to be, he drives to the airport to clear his thoughts, maybe with the idea of going to Vegas for the night. Just as he starts to fall asleep in his car in the parking structure, a woman screams, jumps on the hood of his car and asks for help. Men are chasing her and guns are blazing and he reacts instinctively by driving her off. That woman is Diana and it turns out she is involved in a smuggling escapade. The two of them travel around Los Angeles for the next twenty-four hours, trying to figure a way out of the predicament they have become trapped in. The plot involves Elvis impersonators, high stakes gambling,film production, real estate, high end shopping and the fall of the Shah of Iran. As you can tell, the movie meanders and touches on lots of different elements.
Here is the real deal for you though. You have to pay close attention because it is not front and center of the movie. The subject of the film is how the City and the Hollywood community work. Jeff Goldblum's character Ed, is an engineer in an industry in Southern California that the Hollywood people think is boring. They show him at his job, being disinterested, he complains about not caring himself. To the showbiz world, this validates their view of themselves. Unlike Ed, "We are exciting", "We are different every day". Diana is a beautiful woman who came to Southern California in all likelihood to be a star. Instead she falls into a relationship with a rich older man. There is a cliche of Hollywood that you can see everyday as you drive through town. Later, the older man seems to discard her, another Southern California dream gone bad.

As you watch the film progress, you get a travelogue of L.A. area haunts, usually of the rich. The yacht of Diana's older lover is in Marina Del Rey. She and Ed visit a set in Hollywood and meet up with one of her friends who got into the Biz, by sleeping with the producer. They suffer the indignity of being escorted off the set and of being rejected by her brother, whose connection to the entertainment business is as an Elvis impersonator.  Later in the film they stroll through Beverly Hills shopping district and spend some time in the Beverly Wilshire Hotel. There is a car chase through Century City, in that most annoying of L.A. locations, a multi-storied underground parking garage. If you are from the Southland you know that a parking garage is a necessary anathema. This is a car culture and Ed and Diana end up in the most unlikely vehicle in L.A., a taxi. To make matters worse, the taxi is chased through a parking garage which residents hate, since free parking was at one time a birthright of Angeleno's (those days are long gone). It wouldn't be L.A. if there were not a beach scene, so we get a murder in Malibu. The whole movie is really a critique of the L.A. lifestyle.

Everywhere in the movie are L.A. references. In the opening sequences there are radio shows playing in the background  and defining what the radio was like in Southern California. People from out of the area will not understand why they are watching references to car salesmen in commercials. Pete Ellis was ubiquitous  on TV at the time, he had car dealerships in all the major American brands at some point or another. Most of you probably have a commercial jingle or two stuck in your head. Those earworms are often a result of repetition. "Pete Ellis Dodge, Long Beach Freeway, Firestone Exit, South Gate." It doesn't sound all that memorable, but you put a catchy tune behind it and play it fifty times a day on the local TV stations it will be. Twenty five years after that dealership went away, the sound is still ringing in my head. Cal Worthington is famous in So. Cal for his silly TV commercials where he mocked another car dealer who put his dog in commercials selling cars. Cal's dog "Spot" was a tiger, an elephant, a killer whale. He would do really loopy things like wing walking and then put them in the ads. "Into the Night" is filled with those late night TV ads in the backgrounds of several scenes.

Another odd reference to show business, is a fight to the death between two characters played by Rock and Roll Hall of Famers Carl Perkins and David Bowie. This was Perkins only screen appearance and he is a natural. Bowie of course had made several movies at that point and several more since. In the sequence where they face off, the TV is running in the background, playing an old Abbott and Costello movie. So two icons of pop music are dueling for attention with classic comedians who made movies. It is an odd juxtaposition but typical of this movie, directed by John Landis, a fan of horror films especially. If you were not aware of it, Landis uses the phrase "See You Next Wednesday" as a signature in all of his movies. Here it is on movie posters in the trailer that Ed and Diana get escorted out of. The line comes from Kubrick's "2001". It is no accident that movie references populate this film, even to the point of providing a distraction from a violent fight scene.

There are extended segments in Beverly Hills, both in the shopping district and in the residential neighborhoods. Fans of "Chinatown" know that the plot of that classic is mostly a giant real estate swindle, well it turns out that this movie is heavily involved in that same business. The jewels are supposed to help secure financing for a real estate deal being pursued by rich "Iranian" refugees. Large numbers of said refugees found homes in Beverly Hills and so the sound of Farsi being spoken in the stylish salons of Rodeo Drive was not unusual. It turns out that Jack, Diana's rich patron, is also involved in real estate and that brings some strings of the plot together at the end.
The end of the film takes place at the location that most visitors first encounter the city, the Airport. LAX is always busy but we don't typically have shoot outs there (although it has happened). The odd way in which the stand off resolves itself is again spurred on by Ed's manner. Through the whole picture Jeff  Goldblum plays Ed as if he is exhausted and can barely be bothered to respond to the events taking place around him. The casualness is another one of those L.A. critiques, nothing really seems important to anyone, except the business. The rich and powerful control the political process, the lower level functionaries are corrupt, and the beautiful people get to make their own rules.

"Into the Night" is not an essential movie, but it is one that I always want people to see because it is a tour of the world that I lived in at the time. It features an odd leading man, and a beautiful leading lady, wandering around the city that I both love and hate. There are plenty of amusing bits and pieces that often have nothing to do with the story, they are just a chance to visit at a touchstone of 80s L.A. culture. The scene at Ships Coffee Shop has nothing to do with the story, and everything to do with where you can go in the middle of the night to get dessert. There is no reason to hide the jewels at the flower market, except that then viewers will get a chance to see the flower market. Jake Steiner is in the movie because he turned being a trainer for Harrison Ford into a career as a pitchman for physical fitness (and getting into the business). A movie with a different plot but a very similar look at L.A. almost fifteen years earlier is "Hickey and Bogs". In the place of Goldblum and Pfeiffer, are Bill Cosby and Robert Culp. Maybe it will justify a little analysis down the road, right now I mention it just wanted to show that these sorts of films do repeat themselves and reflect the changes of the city over time. "Get Shorty" in the 1990s and this years "This is the End" cover the same themes. A lot of bad stuff can happen here but if you make it in the movie business , you'll be alright.Richard Kirkham is a lifelong movie enthusiast from Southern California. While embracing all genres of film making, he is especially moved to write about and share his memories of movies from his formative years, the glorious 1970s. His personal blog, featuring current film reviews as well as his Summers of the 1970s movie project, can be found at Kirkham A Movie A Day.

Independence Day: Resurgence

For almost twenty years, I have told the following story to my students as an illustration of a listening technique: When I took my family to see "Independence Day" for the Fourth of July Weekend in 1996, I waited in the lobby after the movie was over while the girls used the restroom. As the heavy crowds were milling around, I heard one fellow complaining out loud "Yeah right, like some alien computer is going to link up with a Macintosh". I thought to myself at that time, "Dude, you just saw a movie about an alien invasion of the planet, and the story point that bugs you is that the computers might have incompatible operating systems, lighten up!" I tell my students that sometimes you have to use a little imagination as you listen, to make what another person is telling you interesting or meaningful. The big picture is often more important than the details. After today, I will have an addendum to the teaching anecdote, "Sometimes the devil is in the details".

This movie fails on so many levels that it is hard to fathom. The overall plot might make some sense but it will only work if the pieces fit together and make the implausible plausible for two hours, that never happens. There are characters here that are in the movie only because they were in the original, they have nothing to do with the plot and they don't do anything interesting. New characters are introduced and we never get a chance to connect with them, they are cardboard cutouts and without any emotional investment, it is hard to care about what happens to them. The coincidences that happen in the span of the story are so unbelievable as to be laughable. The ideas that are developed to engage in combat with the aliens are sometimes nonsensical. Finally, the multiple plot threads don't hang together enough to make anything feel remotely possible. I get that there is a new timeline and history for the planet, but the twenty year interval hardly seems sufficient to build the community that exists in this film and still have some of the elements they want to sell us. This movie is a candidate for Mystery Science Theater 3000, and maybe by next week.

Let's talk about stuff that should work but doesn't. Jeff Goldblum is the biggest asset there is in the film, and he has almost no funny lines or quirky moments that hit. Part of the problem is that there is no Will Smith to play off of, and part of the problem is that he now does things in a casual everyday manner that would have been the butt of one of his comments in the original film. He is back and forth from the moon in a five minute segment, that of course happens after he makes a trek to Africa to deal with a warlord of his acquaintance. He is a hero in the story and has been given substantial power in his new job, and then nobody listens to his advise in a key moment. Bill Pullman was a heroic fighter pilot, turned President, turned war hero again, and here he is portrayed as nearly addled with some form of alien communication that is not decipherable to anyone else. Brent Spinner's character comes back from the dead, going from a short cameo in the original to a major component in this film, and unfortunately for us Star Trek fans, that was not a good thing. Robert Loggia has a wordless appearance and because he died last year, I thought his face might just have been planted in CG form onto an actor on set. It turns out he was in the film but I suspect, only because they were trying to connect the first movie to the second as much as they could. I think William Fichtner is a terrific actor and presense in movies, in this he is nearly an non-entity.

While I was watching this, I was surprised how uninteresting all the special effects looked. I flashed back to the Superman Movies of the late seventies and eighties and I remembered how great the first two films looked and how cheap the second two looked. This sequel looks like the crappy end product of a franchise that is exhausted itself, not like a revived reboot with state of the art technology behind it. It may be that because the film is designed to play in 3D, that standard screenings like the one we attended won't have the same shiny sheen to them. I can tell you I will not be going back to a more expensive 3D screening to find out. I admittedly have no musical talent but I can appreciate film music. I might be the wrong person to cast aspersions on the score for this movie, but I can tell you what my reaction to it was ass a viewer. Eh. There is not a theme or a motif that is memorable. The music cues don't seem to synch up with what is on the screen. I'd have preferred a stronger sound design than most of the score I heard in the theater today.

The best thing about this movie is the poster here

There are several incomprehensible parts to the plot line, and the wanton destruction of large patches of the planet have no horror or awe in them as they have had in other Roland Emmerich films. Every piece of destruction is done on such a massive scale with such speed that it does not feel believable. There is no iconic moment in the film like the destruction of the White House in the first movie. In fact, we appear to have simply reconstructed the White House in the same spot so it could be destroyed along with the rest of the East Coast in this movie. By any chance do you remember the scene where the dog escapes the destruction of Los Angeles in the first movie? This time the dog has been replaced by Judd Hirsh, and it is even less plausible. The original film was no piece of classic screenwriting, but at least in made sense and built to a climax. This film feels like it is all second act and the climaxes are so uninteresting that you wonder what does any of it mean. My answer to you is that it means 20th Century Fox was so focused on getting the franchise up and going, that they neglected to make it audience friendly. The rush to get to the second sequel means this film feels unessential. They spent a ton of dough making this and they were wise to skip paying Will Smith his requested Fifty Million Dollar Fee. It may not make Fifty Million on opening weekend and it will be out of theaters in three weeks or so. Someone at the studio should be losing their job over this catastrophe.